Raqabi emphasizes reports of 'money laundering' and responds within a day
- Mandating banks, financing companies, exchange houses, and electronic payment providers to prioritize submitting data to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)
- Ensuring timely provision of information and notifications enhances money-tracking mechanisms
- Assigning dedicated teams to follow up on requests and empowering them with access to relevant documents and data
- Collecting complete, accurate, clear, and unabbreviated information, data, and documents
- Submitting account statements and transaction records in an electronic format that is searchable, sortable, and analyzable
- Designating a primary and an alternative contact point among specialists in anti-money laundering (AML) for direct coordination
In a regulatory move aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of the anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) framework, and ensuring the integrity, accuracy, and completeness of data and information required for supervisory purposes, regulators have emphasized that financial institutions must prioritize submitting data required to be reported to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to the relevant authority. This is to ensure the quality and completeness of responses, thereby reinforcing rapid response within the AML framework and improving money-tracking mechanisms within this system.
In accordance with this directive, banks, exchange houses, financing companies, as well as electronic payment service providers and electronic money service providers, are required to promptly supply the FIU with information, data, and notifications in a timely manner. Account and financial transaction records must be submitted in an electronic format that is searchable, sortable, and analyzable, specifying the transaction date, execution time, direction, value, and currency used. This approach aims to enhance the quality of their financial analysis operations.
Furthermore, the data must include account balance statements after each financial transaction. The submitted data must be complete, accurate, and unabbreviated, enabling the analysis of financial transactions and tracking of money flows without the need to request additional data.
In this regard, regulators have emphasized that entities subject to the supervision of the Central Bank of Kuwait must adhere to the following:
- Implement internal procedures to ensure that requests from the FIU are treated as high-priority and responded to within one business day of receipt, unless the FIU specifies a different timeframe based on the nature of the request or case circumstances. This should be achieved by assigning specialized staff or dedicated teams to follow up on such requests and empowering them with the necessary authority to obtain information, data, and documents from relevant departments, thereby ensuring rapid response.
- Provide the FIU with all requested information, data, and documents in a complete, accurate, clear, and unabbreviated manner. This enables the FIU to understand the nature of financial transactions, analyze them, and track money flows without requiring additional information or documents. If any requested information or document cannot be provided, the reason must be stated, along with the measures taken to verify it.
- Data must be organized, with no more than one data point per field. It must include the transaction date, execution time, direction, value, currency, purpose, and type. Transaction types include local or international transfers, checks, cash deposits or withdrawals, creation/breakdown of financing deposits, salary installment payments, commission profits, inter-account transfers, or purchase/sale of securities.
Adherence to the designation of a primary and an alternative contact point, both drawn from specialists in the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) department, who are responsible for direct coordination with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), following up on its requests, while senior management monitors the level of compliance, the speed and quality of responses to such requests, and ensures the provision of the necessary human, technical, and internal procedural resources, thereby guaranteeing effective implementation and continuity of operations.
